He Was Definitely Trying to Sell Something, But What?

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He stood behind the wrought-iron bars the way a bored shopkeeper stands behind a counter—except he wasn’t bored, and he wasn’t exactly a shopkeeper. More like a skeleton who had taken a correspondence course in salesmanship and passed with a C-minus. His little jumpsuit was printed with symbols that looked like instructions for assembling a lost civilization. Or maybe it was laundry care information for the dead.

Behind him the vines—or maybe they were thoughts, or maybe just old garden hoses having an existential crisis—poured down the wall in slow, black squiggles. They twitched a little, like they were waiting for someone to ask a question. But nobody ever asks questions in places like this. They just look around awkwardly and hope they’re not making eye contact with the wrong dimension.

He raised one hand, a gesture halfway between a greeting and a warning, like he wanted to say “Welcome!” and “Run!” at the same time. It was the kind of wave you get from a man who’s been in retail too long, except this guy had been dead for centuries, so maybe it didn’t count.

I asked him what he was selling. It seemed polite.

He made a sound like wind blowing across empty soda bottles. Maybe that was supposed to be an answer. Or maybe he was clearing his throat. Hard to tell with a skull.

The vines rustled behind him. Not leaves—more like ideas trying to rearrange themselves.

He stepped closer to the bars. Up close he smelled faintly of dust, static electricity, and an attic full of unsent postcards. He pointed at me, then at the vines, then at his own ribs, like he was trying to complete a very simple sentence that had forgotten how to grammar.

He was definitely trying to sell something, I thought, but what?
Hope? Horror? A coupon book for the afterlife? Maybe just the peculiar comfort of knowing that even the dead have day jobs.

The vines suddenly quivered like they’d just remembered a punchline.

He pressed his bony palm to the bars and nodded, very slowly, as if approving some invisible transaction. I didn’t feel any different, but that’s how these things usually work—you only realize what you bought years later.

When I finally walked away, the vines settled, the skeleton straightened his tiny jacket, and everything behind those bars went quiet again, like a store that knows another customer will wander by eventually.

Whatever he sold me, I suppose I own it now. Maybe it’s nothing.
Maybe it’s everything.